The UN must change the way its human rights institutions are run to ensure that oppressed peoples — and not just their governments — are heard, an Iranian Nobel laureate urged on Wednesday.
Shirin Ebadi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, said in a lecture in Geneva that civil society and non-governmental organizations should be given a greater role in the UN’s Human Rights Council and other bodies.
“The scales of human rights have lost their balance,” she said in reference to the current make-up of the Human Rights Council, whose members include many countries in the Arab world regularly accused of human rights abuses.
“How can one expect countries that continuously and repeatedly abuse human rights to condemn others who do the same thing?” she asked in a lecture to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“It is time for us to put our trust in the people, and for the UN to bring in the real representatives of the people in the form of civil society,” she said.
The Iranian lawyer also said the UN should do more to promote economic as well as civil and political rights, and proposed a new international convention to eradicate poverty.
Under such a convention, states would be encouraged to cut their military spending to no more than their education and health budgets.
Those who did not heed this would be unable to get loans from the World Bank, Ebadi said.
Ebadi said some people might find these proposals idealistic but urged her audience: “Our challenge here today is to think in terms of dreams while acting realistically.”
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS